Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chillydawg 3430 days ago
Android had user profiles for a while. If you associate different fingerprints or different pin codes with different accounts, you can have your sneaky account with all the warcrime photos and the "open" account which is full of dick pics and selfies, as per usual. Almost no new technology required.

This all assumes the border guard is simply going to go through texts, pictures and maybe open up a facebook or similar. If forensics get hold of it you're screwed.

2 comments

Android still does have user profiles. On Nougat, go to Settings -> Users. You can add profiles and associate a different lock with each (haven't tried fingerprints). Each has different sets of app data and switching between them is kinda obscure if you don't know what to do.

Just need to switch user before you get off the plane.

Yes, this is the way to go.

You have to give the thugs something... or else they'll keep after you until you do. So you have to give them some boring but credible data. Wiping the phone is suspicious.

There needs to be a way to unlock the phone at a moment's notice via either profile. And there shouldn't be an easy way to see if there is another profile on the phone.

If you're phone is android and FDE is unlocked they can plug it in to a device which will rip everything off. It's quite fast. Everything is then searched for keywords, contact phone numbers matched against ones of interest, etc. Best just to have a plain phone and restore from the cloud.
'had'? My android device has user profiles.